Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923

1. GERMAN JEWRY AND THE MAKING OF THE OSTJUDE, 1800–1880

GERMAN JEWRY AND THE MAKING OF THE OSTJUDE, 1800-1880 THE idea of thezyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFE Ostjude ("Eastern" Jew) was developed, in its essentials, over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century. To be sure, the generic term Ostjude did not gain popular currency until the early twentieth century.1 Nevertheless, a generalized negative thinking prevailed much earlier. East European Jews were held to be dirty, loud, and coarse. They were regarded as immoral, culturally backward creatures of ugly and anachronistic ghettoes. In large part this was a view formulated and propagated by West European and especially German Jews, serving as a symbolic construct by which they could distinguish themselves from their less fortunate, unemancipated East European brethren. In this sense, the very notion "Ostjude" was the product of the modernization of Jewish life and consciousness, for before the penetration of Enlightenment thinking, Jews did not divide themselves into radically antithetical "Eastern" and "Western" components. Local differences had always existed, but in the preemancipation era they were of little significance when compared with the overall similarities. Jews everywhere lived in what Jacob Katz has called "traditional" society,2 and were bound by a common sociopolitical situation and linked by a shared system of beliefs and attachments. Within that traditional social context there was a strong sense of Jewish solidarity. Before the era of emancipation East European Jews who moved to Western Europe underwent a very different 1 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDC 3 GERMAN JEWRY AND THE OSTJUDE, 1800-1880 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZ 4 experience from the one that awaited their counterparts in the nineteenth century. Between 1600 and 1800 wave after wave of Eastern Jews made their way to Western Europe. The reception given them was generally cordial. Local Jews did everything they could to help, and despite some natural initial tensions, integrated these Jews into their own communities. It was only in the late eighteenth century that the attitude changed and a generalized antagonism began to develop.3 It is not difficult to see why this should have been the case: the new antipathy went hand in hand with the attempt to modernize Jewish life and thinking. The overwhelming concern for enlightenment and emancipation gradually effaced the older, more traditional sentiments. Nineteenth-century Jewish emancipation in Western Europe destroyed both the assumptions and bases of traditional Jewish society. Inevitably, it also transformed older patterns of Jewish national solidarity, for at least in theory, political equality demanded a new kind of Jew whose identity was so closely interwoven with the modes of his particular society that he would be recognizable only within that specific society. This marks the birth of the German or English or French Jew.4 A novel situation had been created. Jewish historical development was now characterized by a profound disjunction. On the one hand, emancipation and enlightenment in the West; on the other, the continuation of political disenfranchisement and traditional Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. The new polarity introduced an unprecedented dialectical tension into Jewish life. Many West European Jews expressed their disdain for Eastern Jews, but it was in Germany that such notions were given their most radical formulation. This was so because German Jews felt the rift most acutely. Germany, after all, bordered Poland, a geographical factor of great importance. The physical accessibility of Germany from Poland had for centuries made it the historical gateway for Jews migrating from East to West.5 Moreover, Prussia's acquisition of Poland's western provinces in 1772 and of Posen in 1793 and 1795 brought the problem literally closer to home. When Jewish emancipation became the center of public discussion in Germany, this proximity became a potent argument against emancipation. Critics asserted that granting political freedom would lead to an invasion of Jews from Eastern Europe.6 The concern was a continuing one; in fact, the Jews of Posen were not granted the same rights as Jews of the other Prussian provinces until 1847, and caught between Poles and Germans, maintained an "Eastern" image into GERMAN JEWRY AND THE OSTJUDE, 1800-1880 5 the twentieth century. While the geographical dimension was absent in other West European countries, German Jews were never able to forget that they shared a common border with the unemancipated Eastern ghetto masses. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, German Jewish history was conditioned by this presence, as both myth and reality.7 Elsewhere in Western Europe the East European Jew was an irritant...